Pelle Pelles and Postmodern Raps: Earl Sweatshirt Live at Royale Boston
Peace peace peace! I wrote a concert review for a small, fresh Boston music publication called Heartbreak News—I'm republishing those words here, a short dig into Earl's live show on November 24th.
Voir dire. /ˌvwär ˈdir/. noun. a preliminary examination of a witness or a juror by a judge or counsel.
I’d been meaning to see Earl Sweatshirt (gov’t name: Thebe Kgositsile) live since time immemorial. His simultaneous positioning as irreverent in his day-to-day while sincere in his diary-like recordings made me curious to see how his Jekyll-Hyde states would surface in a performance context, and his sound-sop production turn over the past five years has borne works that sink into contexts without which we cannot exist. A heaviness in his heart is balanced by nimbleness in thought and speech; bearing witness is burdensome without wit that meets the matter.
Earl’s presence in Boston in a biiiig leather Pelle Pelle jacket, at the Royale on November 24th (alongside frequent collaborators The Alchemist, MIKE, and Black Noi$e) showed us just how difficult a life of the mind can be when pressed to perform for audiences. He warmed up to us eventually, pleased by our recollection of his every bar and our earnest love for his humor and his depth; from Doris classics like “Molasses” to his new record Voir Dire from top to bottom, Boston held Earl up, and Earl delivered. Thebe is every bit the poet his father (Keorapetse) was on this earth; a post-structuralist posture was apparent in his pace, and his patience with us as an audience allowed true connection over the abstruse yet effective lyrics he’s known for (e.g. “Streets ablaze with the anger complacency and deceit create”).
“Tabula rasa”, on 2022 album SICK!
Jokes broke through in brief moments: mid-show, Earl called out in celebration of the 50th anniversary of hip-hop this year, imploring us to do fifty push-ups if we love hip-hop (and scolding us when no one got down on the ground).
Seeing Thebe in the flesh reminded me of a brother of mine from LA; both are blessed and cursed with eyes too wide and minds too open to ignore the wholeness of what sits before them, cross-examining testifiers and criticizing juries that decide fates as the world’s sentence lays in the balance. When my brother lived in Boston, he weighed delight and delinquency with learning to struggle in this foreign context; Earl appeared to do the same. The music video for track 2 on Voir Dire, “Vin Skully”, gets to the heart of the matter: in every frame, Earl strolls a treadmill in a new setting, a reference to the old parable proffering, “wherever you go, there you are''.
Vin Skully, live
Originally published below!
my first concert ever was Earl Sweatshirt in New Haven in 2015—this brought back memories! A thanks for writing